Yowane Haku


 * Haku Yowane redirects here. For other characters with the name "Yowane", see Yowane.

Yowane Haku is an official recognized derivative. Her name is taken from Yowane meaning negative sayings/thoughts and Haku roughly translated as utter. Her first name and last name make a play on words "yowane-(wo)-haku" (弱音(を)吐く), meaning to say negative thoughts or to show white feather. Her white hair is from ハク, which has the same pronunciation with 白 (white).

Design
Haku's design is drastically different from Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid 2 developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media. She has white hair as her name suggest, though popularized as grey, it is as long as her body and styled into a ponytail held by a bow that is striped black and purple. She has a stray hair at the top of her head, nose length bangs, and payot. Her eyes tend to slope downward and there is a hint of under-eye circles. On her left upper arm are painted red letters, "DTM", that stands for 'Desktop Music', which is what Vocaloids were created for.

Her top is grey in color and sleeveless, the style is midriff with low cleavage covered by a purple tie. The rest of her attire is black with purple trim. She wears detached sleeves, and bell bottom pants with short white boots. On her left side is a belt strap. Her headset microphone points upward away from her mouth.

Personality
Haku came to represent an aspect of failure within the Vocaloids, illustrator Caffein portrayed her as a DTMer, a person who uses the Vocaloid program but has not mastered it and is thus stricken with grief and disappointment at their lack of talent. The fandom displays her personality mainly as a depressed introvert, and at times lonely. It should be noted that there is little to no portrayals of Haku as a mean drunk.

Other aspects of Haku is being a failed Miku or a crier due to her failures. It is not uncommon to see her drawn with tears in her eyes, whether she is happy or not.

Source: Vocaloid Wiki
Haku was originally made as a representation of songs that use Hatsune Miku but ended up sounding awful. In such cases, the makers of that music would then proceed to whine about how their work never received attention and later moved on to whine when criticism stated their work as dull and boring, or was posted quite late when few people were on Nico Nico Douga. She became popular and her creator Caffein later established other characters following the same procedures, each representing a slightly different aspect of failure within the Vocaloids.

Source: Danbooru Wiki
 Notice: Danbooru is an image gallery known to host explicit imagery, the following link should lead to safe content, the text here is copied verbatim and the ref links are merely for crediting the source.

Yowane Haku is a Vocaloid whose name means "speaking weak words" ('speaking' here has connotation of a pent-up sigh or muttering.) She gets her start from a thread in 2chan where a user commented: "I bought Hatsune Miku for her cute looks but no matter how hard I try, I can't get anything better than mechanical sounding songs out of her."

An artist (Caffein) took this idea and ran with it to create Yowane Haku, an alter ego of all unskilled users of Hatsune Miku. Haku is a sad Vocaloid who just can't sing as well as Miku. She is always crying because of this and vents her frustration by drinking. Her image colors are silver and purple. Her character item is a sake bottle. She's also noted for her curvier figure compared to Miku and has a decent following.

This created a trend of users labeling badly-made Vocaloid songs with voyakiloid, or "shouting vocaloid." It is implied that it was Haku who sung those songs, and not Miku.

Acceptance into Vocaloids
Haku is one of the Vocaloid derivatives that became officially recognized by Crypton Future Media, the publisher of the Character Vocal Series for Vocaloid 2. The other derivatives bearing this distinction is Hachune Miku, Akita Neru, Sakine Meiko, and Tako Luka.

Featured appearances

 * MikuMikuDance (MMD), 3D software
 * An MMD model of Haku was created in August 2008 by modeler Animasa. See the Haku Yowane (Animasa) page for details, and also see other Haku models.


 * Maker Hikōshiki Hatsune Mix, manga
 * Haku makes a cameo appearance as a student of Neru (ch6) and is also in chapter 7 and chapter 14, then she later appears drinking sake with Meiko (ch16).


 * Chibi Miku-san, 4-koma manga
 * A popular 4-koma that portrays Haku in adult form, she is introduced (#50) as an owner of a local candy shop in Vocalotown, she is a friend to both of the Hatsune sisters and is allergic to almost anything fun. Aside from that, her personality is very identical to her original character (done by Caffein), except for her alcohol abuse.


 * Project Diva (PD), game
 * Haku is an available character in the PSP game, Hatsune Miku ~Project Diva~ and again as a playable character in its sequel. Her appearance in the first Project Diva game did not carry her "official" personality, and was as cheerful as Miku. This was corrected in Project Diva 2nd, complete with moody mannerisms if the player has not chosen her for a long time.


 * Fanmade Promotional Videos (PV)
 * Haku is commonly seen in fanmade videos, portrayed in various ways or simply dancing.


 * Merchandise
 * Official licensed Haku figurines have been produced, such as Nendoroid Puchi and a scale model.

Notable songs
While Haku is regarded to sing any song that is a "failure" song of Miku, since she can have a voice configure, it is possible for her to have an individual song dedicated to her.

あなたのVOYAKILOID / Anata no VOYAKILOID (Your VOYAKILOID)
"Your VOYAKILOID" is a parody of Miku's original song "Your Diva." Basically, it's Haku telling whoever bought her that she from now on is their VOYAKILOID. She talks about being considered horrible, and she constantly brings sake and drinking into the song. In all honesty, she wants to tell everyone her feelings through songs, but she chooses to be worthless because she will forever only be a singing robot and have the voice of a singing robot. She then explains though that she's fine the way she is. After all, the one who installed her is her "drinking buddy." She finally states that she will keep drinking because she is (your) VOYAKILOID.

ツマンネ / Tsumanne
Haku reflects on the Nico users' view of her as boring/useless (tsumanne) and drinks to soothe her sorrows. In a similar vein to "Turkish March Owata" Haku finds herself late to a meeting with Neru, who yells at her over the phone for oversleeping. As the two finally meet up after a series of mishaps, they remember they were supposed to meet the next week.

白ノ娘 / Shiro no Musume (The Daughter of White)
The final song released in the Story of Evil and Haku's big hit song that made #1 in the Weekly Vocaloid Ranking, 119. In this song Haku takes the role of Clarith, a girl living in the Elphegort country, characterized that all its habitants are green-haired. There she is ridiculed and discriminated by everybody due her white hair. Despondent and alone, Clarith makes a trip to the an Eldoh's Tree where she prays for a friend. She later finds near the three an unconscious green-haired girl and nurses her back to healt. The girl's name is Michaela (Miku) and both became good friends.

Michaela is beautiful and sweet girl, and loved by everyone; this doesn't hinders its friendship with Clarith. Together, the girls run off to the city to live there, and while they have hardships working as maids for a wealthy merchant women, they live happily together. However one day, Kyle Marlon, King of the Marlon country, sees Michaela and falls in love with her - so much in love that he denies the marriage offer from the Riliane Lucifen d'Autriche aka the "Daughter of Evil". Angry, Riliane makes an order purge all the the green-haired women of Elphegort. Clarith survives due her different hair color, and looking all of the green-haired women dead by the massacre, she cries and wishes have died in Michaela's stead.

Hearing rumors that the "Daughter of Evil" was finally killed in the revolution, Clarith decides to start over and live at a church in a port town. Soon, she finds a girl near the church and nurses her back to health. Clarith and the girl (Riliane) become friends in the same way Michaela and Clarith did. However, one night, Clarith overhears a confession that the girl is making in the confession box and finds that girl is actually the "Daughter of Evil". Enraged, Clarith sneaks up on Riliane while she is mulling near the harbor and seeks to kill her with a knife but is stopped by "the vision of a phantom boy". She then realizes that Riliane is a lonely girl like she used to be and spares her life. Clarith apologizes to Michaela, as if in a prayer, that she did not avenge her death and goes on to teach Riliane to do work. As the time passes they became friends and Clarise notices that her cooking has improved.

Trivia

 * Haku is referred to as a "VOYAKILOID" (in Japanese, ぼやく) - 'Boyaku' means grouchy or to grumble and complain, the pronunciation in Japanese is Boyakiroido.


 * Going by Caffein's character sheet commentary, Haku's early design had a tinge of grey skin, but it was not well received. Her red eyes were not an attempt to reflect albinism, but merely inspired while watching a Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. music video on Nico Nico Douga, the character named Major has red eyes.


 * She is originally a Miku user, but Caffein states it is not a problem to think of her as a failing Vocaloid, or a co-worker, or the lady at the small candy shop excreta.


 * It has been pointed out by some fans when speaking about songs and PVs that feature Haku singing, that if one succeeds at producing a "bad" song, then no failure was met in the process. There are a small number of fans who disapprove of such songs, this is because it can be considered a contradiction to the point of Haku's existence being based on failure. This in particular is also aimed at the Haku songs that end up sounding "good" as Haku was meant to be far from this ideal. However, whatever songs that come out in her name are subject to the interpretation of the producer, whether they follow Haku's depiction of failure or not.

Gallery
Note; this is not a gallery for every fanart out there, just for reference